In Rememberance

The past year has seen a truly daunting amount of creative inspiration pass on. Many men that I looked up to as artists (illustrators, authors, actors, etc.) left us during the last few months. It might just be that this is the first year I have really paid attention, but I feel like it’s a little bit shocking to think about how many artists died this year. I would like to take a minute to say something about those whose influence I will especially miss.

Michael Crichton
The author of Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Congo, The Andromeda Strain, and many others, this man had a truly staggering imagination. And the amazing thing about his work is a lot of it was based on scientific ideas that he then expanded to make an imaginative story that would totally surprise his audience. My favorite Crichton novel is The Eaters of the Dead. This particular book came about as a bet with a friend that he couldn’t write a best seller based on Beowulf. Well, write it he did, and he made it both engrossing and believable. The man was truly a genius.

Michael Turner
This was a comic book artist who had reached the point where he could make a very good living by simply drawing covers. If there was a Michael Turner illustration on the front cover, the book would sell thousands more. He was that good. It wasn’t just a fluke thing. He wasn’t just the new hot thing. He was honestly that good. The books he did sold more because they were beautiful to look at. Every guy that reads comics wanted to be Michael Turner’s version of Batman. And we all wanted to meet his version of Wonder Woman. And Supergirl. And Storm. And the Invisible Woman. And the Scarlet Witch. Michael Turner could draw beautiful women with the best of them, but he could make everything else look beautiful too. The covers he did for Identity Crisis are gorgeous. They’re a huge part of what was so great about that series. And the covers he did for Civil War are the best part of that whole thing. I personally miss seeing his work every Wednesday when I go to comic book store. And I think I will for a long time.

Yves Saint Laurent
It’s interesting; just a few months before he died I had no idea who Saint Laurent was. I’ve never been what one might call a fashion expert. I’ve never been someone who knew anything about fashion at all actually. And then this last year I read a book called The Beautiful Fall about the rise of both Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld. It was fascinating. And the more I learned about him, the more interested I became. He was an artist, a designer, a traveler, the owner of a huge company; he changed the entire fashion industry and the city of Paris itself. I learned about who he was, became interested in his work and art, and then found out he had died.

Paul Newman
One in a million. I knew this man was magic when I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for the first time. I must have been about nine years old the first time I saw it. There’s not many opinions I held as a nine year old that I still fully believe, but Paul Newman being amazing is one of them. As a small boy, he had convinced me that when I died I wanted it to be in a blaze of glory, with absolutely no chance for survival. I don’t know too many other people that knew how they wanted to die at that age. And if they did, it was probably because they had seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid too. Cool Hand Luke. The Road to Perdition. The man was simply amazing. He really didn’t make that many movies when compared against other actors, but his characters were all played in such a way that you never quite got them out of your head.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke
For a lot of people Clarke’s greatest contribution to science fiction, and popular fiction in general, is 2001: A Space Odyssey. And I won’t argue with them for thinking that. He changed the genre of science fiction with that book and, later, with the movie. But he changed me with one of his short stories. It’s not very long, and it’s just one of many in one of his collections. It’s called The Nine Billion Names of God. That story showed me that science fiction could be something different than spaceships fighting and blasting lasers at each other. It also showed me what could be accomplished with a short story if the author really knows what he/she is doing. The story is perfect. It’s an incredibly original idea. It flows perfectly. And the ending completely blindsided me. The world of literature lost one of its best with this man.

Heath Ledger
The death of Heath Ledger completely shocked me. I wasn’t expecting it and I didn’t really know what to do with it. He wasn’t old or sick. I wasn’t expecting it to happen anytime soon. It was a very bizarre and surreal experience. I believe that he was one of the best actors we have seen in a very long time and it’s a tragedy that we have such a small amount of his work to remember him by. Never in my life have I seen a man so completely become the character he was portraying. Never before have I completely forgotten who the actor playing a character is. But that happened all the time with him. The Dark Knight, Brokeback Mountain, Lords of Dogtown. Heath Ledger disappeared in all of these movies and his prospective character became the person you were watching. He was, simply put, awesome. Even when you go back to when his acting wasn’t quite as good, with 10 Things I Hate About You and the shortl-ived, Celtic-themed, TV show The Roar. They were all awesome.

I would like to end by listing just a few people that I am not going to write about, but I believe the creative process as a whole is a little bit dimmer with them gone.
George Carlin
Sydney Pollack
Bernie Mac
Rudy Ray Moore
Isaac Hayes